memes, music, personal

Ten Albums

A friend over on Facebook has been tasked with choosing ten albums that greatly influenced his taste in music; one a day for ten days; no explanation; no reviews; just album covers.

I’ve been meaning to do this myself for quite a while, so I thought I’d play along, but as always I’ll eviscerate the rules: I’m posting them all at once and here, rather than on Facebook.

So here are my ten albums – well no, actually some are just works (large or small) as there’s a large representation of classical as opposed to pop. They’re here all at once, in no particular order. Oh, and only one item per group or composer.

Monteverdi; 1610 Vespers
(John Eliot Gardner)
Byrd; Gradualia
(broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1970s)
Carl Orff; Carmina Burana
(André Previn)
Beatles; Abbey Road
Bach; Toccata & Fugue in D Minor
(Peter Hurford)
Pink Floyd; Dark Side of the Moon
Caravan; Land of Grey & Pink
Louis-Claude d’Aquin; Noël Étranger
(Noël VIII) (Michel Chapuis)
Yes; Close to the Edge
Handel; Messiah
(this is the score of the Prout edition we sang in the school choir)

I’m not nominating people to pick up the thread, but do join in if you wish.

amusements, science

November Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to this month’s five quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.

November Quiz Questions: Chemical Science

  1. Verdigris, is a green pigment mainly comprising salts of which metal? Copper
  2. Friedrich Kekulé is credited with figuring out the correct structure of which chemical? Benzene
  3. What is the heaviest naturally occurring element? Plutonium
  4. William Perkin is famous for what? Synthesis of the first artificial purple dye, mauvine (aka. aniline purple), in 1856
  5. What is the pH of pure water? 7.0

Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2022.

medical, memes, science

Ten Things: November

This year our Ten Things column each month is concentrating on science and scientists.

Where a group is described as “great” or “important” this is not intended to imply these necessarily the greatest or most important, but only that they are up there amongst the top flight.

Medical Discoveries

  1. Blood groups
  2. Transplant surgery
  3. Antibiotics
  4. Circulatory system
  5. Germ theory
  6. Insulin
  7. Vaccination
  8. Anaesthesia
  9. Oral contraception
  10. Blood transfusion
arts, history, ramblings

Christmas Stamps

Royal Mail have released this year’s Christmas stamps, and yet again we’ve managed to create a perfectly horrible, ever more nauseatingly religious, set of designs – which isn’t helped by this ubiquitous barcode.

UK 2023 Christmas Stamps
This year’s British Christmas stamps
[Click the image for a larger view]

Royal Mail had (at least until recently) a policy of alternating religious and secular themes year-by-year. This seems to have gone by the board as the last five years’ designs have all been religious.

Yes, I know Christmas is supposed to be a religious festival, and this is a nominally Christian country. However it would be really good to (a) have some stamps celebrating the pagan Yule – or Roman Saturnalia which provided much of the Christian festivity – and (b) some decent, simple designs.

We’ve had special Christmas stamps every year since 1966 (thanks to the then Postmaster General, Tony Benn, whose idea it was). But to my mind there have been few really good designs. From all the years, perhaps the one I like best – for their clean simplicity – are the ones from 1980.

UK 1980 Christmas Stamps
1980

With 1969, 1973 and 1993 following on (not necessarily in that order).

UK 1969 Christmas Stamps
1969
UK 1973 Christmas Stamps
1973
UK 1993 Christmas Stamps
1993

As for the rest, they span the range from merely OK to abominably awful.

Not that other countries’ stamps are necessarily any better, although many are.

amusements, science

November Quiz Questions

Again this year we’re beginning each month with five pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. They’re not difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers, so hopefully you’ll learn something new, as well as have a bit of fun.

November Quiz Questions: Chemical Science

  1. Verdigris, is a green pigment mainly comprising salts of which metal?
  2. Friedrich Kekulé is credited with figuring out the correct structure of which chemical?
  3. What is the heaviest naturally occurring element?
  4. William Perkin is famous for what?
  5. What is the pH of pure water?

Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.

memes, personal

Unblogged October

Sun 1 Good grief, we’re 3/4 of the way through the year! Although it’s quite warm, it’s getting dark and dreary – the dismals (ie. SAD) are beginning to get me. Arrggghhhh!!!!!
Mon 2 It’s time to think about Christmas cards. As some here will know for the last 20 years we’ve had our own cards printed, as large postcards, often using one of my photos. We’re investigating something different this year; if it works it’ll still be a postcard but of some collage. We’re experimenting.
And as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, postcards work extremely well. Printed in bulk they’re cheaper than cards, they avoid all the faff of envelopes, and they hinder the writing of “family letters”.
Tue 3 A few days ago, when watering the plants on the study windowsill, I managed to water the scanner – rather more than I thought. In consequence it had some significant water ingress and despite mopping it out there was obviously water damage to the electrics as the scans didn’t properly. So buy a new scanner, which arrived today. It’s cheap and cheerful; not yet convinced about the quality of the scans, but it’ll do for a while.
Wed 4 N’s birthday. We went to dinner wih a long-time friend, and very pleasant it was – made better by it being our first social outing in in seems like forever.
Thu 5 Late abed last night, so had the luxury of a lie-in (well more like a good sleep-in) this morning. Consequently not much got done, except we did manage to audit the freezer – and just as well because the running log was 50% wrong!
Fri 6 How can the supermarket so comprehensively bugger up our delivery. 75% of what we ordered was just shown as unavailable. Of what we did get (ie. not a lot) we got milk which we hadn’t ordered, and double rations of two varieties of cat food. Central Customer Services didn’t know what had happened and had no reports of anything – but did help by creating a repeat order for tomorrow. Customer Services at the Fulfilment Centre rang me later on, but she still didn’t know what had happened and was demanding the warehouse find out – we both suspected a computer glitch. But everyone was duly apologetic and agreed it really shouldn’t have happened under any circumstances and we’d none of us seen anything like it before. Luckily, having worked so long in IT, I understand that these things can occasionally happen.
Sat 7 Fortunately today’s repeat supermarket delivery was fine, barring the expected odd couple of items unavailable. So a great cook-a-thon happened this afternoon – using all the old apples and tomatoes (not together), as well as making mincemeat & apple tart and a sausage and veg traybake for dinner.
Sun 8 At last the Jerusalem Artichokes have got a good display of small yellow sunflower-ish blooms. They’re only about 10cm across, but rather pretty. This isn’t surprising as they are very closely related to sunflowers; they’re all Helianthus spp.Jerusalem artichoke flowers
Mon 9 Having casseroled all the surplus tomatoes on Saturday, today they were turned into tomato & bean soup. Tomatoes pushed through the Mouli; onion & garlic sweated in butter; add the tomato, various seasonings & herbs, and a tin of blackeye beans. A substantial evening repast with some added grated cheddar and hunks of bread.
Tue 10 02:45. Fox barking out in the street. Can’t see it, but it sounds as if it’s a short way away. Actually I’m not sure there aren’t two – one in each direction. Probably territorial; it’s a bit early for fucking season.
Wed 11 Decided that my dermatology appointment scheduled for tomorrow would be a complete waste of time – it’s only a follow-up from January and there’s nothing worth looking at. So I cancelled it.
Thu 12 There’s something odd in the air round here at the moment. A couple of evenings ago one of the local pubs was burned out. It created absolute chaos at the time as it’s on a busy main road – and of course there was the usual crowd of sightseers. It’ll be interesting to see the conclusions of the fire investigation.
Then yesterday a family of beavers (2 adults, 3 kits) were released into an enclosure by the canal, about a mile away. Even the Mayor of London turned up! Said beavers are supposed to be re-engineering the water/marsh there, but I don’t see that there’s enough tree habitat for them. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ll give them 3-4 months before some thug has either culled them, or they have to be rehomed.
Fri 13 Our Christmas cards have arrived. They’ve turned out better than I expected. But you’ll have to wait to see them.
Sat 14 After a summer hiatus, another excellent literary society online talk, hosted by yours truly. We’re getting too good at this.
Sun 15 Why doesn’t it get any better? There’s always so much to do, and however hard you work you never seem to make any progress or reduce the length of the to do list. It’s almost always a case of you really need to do A urgently, but before you can do that you have to do B, and that needs C and D doing – but D can’t be completed until A is done! Arrggghhhh!
Mon 16 Oh bugger! Woke up this morning with a headache and dizziness – so much so that I was slightly queasy. That scuppered accompanying N to her hospital specialist appointment. Bloody labyrinthitis.
Tue 17 Rinse and repeat – although some of the soapiness has been washed out.
Wed 18 It’s raining. How unusual! The Rosie Cat has just come in and she’s sparkling in the light from tiny water droplets in her fur, almost as if the kids have sprinkled her with glitter. Really a rather fetching look!
Thu 19 Oh God! It’s crap IT month. First a dead scanner. Then a dead printer. And today my PC won’t start. No time to try to find out what’s happening, so I have to try to do everything from the laptop, plus the backups (on the server) which, of course, didn’t run last night. I don’t need this!
Fri 20 What a nightmare week. I feel completely shell-shocked. I’d like to say I’ll have a quiet weekend, but if nothing else I need to investigate what ails the PC. First I have to extract the tin box from its corner. Lucky I had the laptop pretty much ready to roll – although I keep having to drag files off the backup server and install odd bits of software, so everything is taking extra time. But we’re getting there.
Sat 21 Result! After lunch I bit the bullet and attached my wounded PC. It was refusing to boot; clearly not picking up the boot drive. Ensure everything inside is firmly plugged; and it has power OK. Swap the two drives to see if the cables are dead; or maybe the boot disk. Nope. Nothing. So I wonder if the power cable is dead; try plugging into a different socket on the power distribution. Yes! Everything works. So clearly one channel in the PC’s power supply has died; but (for now at least) the rest are OK. And we’re back in business! Job done in an hour, including recovering the updated files from my laptop. Phew!
Sun 22 After all that rain and gloom the second half of the night was clear – at least it was crystal clear at 06:30 with Saturn shining really brightly in the western sky. It was, however still overcast at midnight, so we missed the display of Orionid meteors.
Mon 23 What happened!? I actually managed to pick up a project rewriting web material for the literary society I’d not touched for over a year, and which should have been done ages ago. That was after I’d spent ages on IT support for the society.
Tue 24 Spent half the day looking at new laptops for N and maybe a new PC for me. More money! We’re having an expensive month. Luckily we have the money – but not for long at this rate.
Wed 25 Wasted so much of the day, again, looking at laptops and PCs. Nothing much usefully achieved other than the grocery order.
Thu 26 So finally I managed to get our new PCs on order. Laptop for N, and a new high-spec PC for me.
After this I discovered that somewhere in the IT chaos I’d lost the records for half a dozen new members from the literary society membership database. So that wasted a good hour putting it right.
Fri 27 Things are definitely weird round here. I’ve never been one for dreaming a lot; I could go weeks or even months without being aware of a good dream. But recently – say the last month – that I’ve been dreaming much more than usual. Well at least much more than I am normally aware of. And it seems to be mostly before waking in the morning rather than the middle of the night. I’m not one for recording dreams, trying to store them in memory, or trying lucid dreaming, so I don’t have much of a handle on what these recent dreams contain. I just have this vague memory that they’ve all involved some bizarre synthesis of school, university and my former work – pick any two, or even all three. I cannot explain why this is happening. There’s no obvious trigger: no change of medication; I get really good scores from my CPAP machine; I don’t watch horror movies or read horror stories; I don’t eat late at night. But there must be something triggering it. It’s very odd.
Sat 28 All children should be microchipped at birth. Discuss over dinner. Well we do it for our cats, dogs, horses etc., so why not our kids?
And the rest of us can get a catch-up chip with our flu jab or the like.
Sun 29 Evening meal: Roast chicken thighs with pork stuffing, with bubble-and-squeak du maison; followed by apple & mincemeat crumble & cream. And a bottle of very nice Greek white wine.
Mon 30 It’s no bloody wonder the counrty’s in a mess. You book the guys to come and take away a pile of rubbish. Yes, they say, we’ll be there between 13:00 and 16:00. Are they? Not a chance. It’s now 19:40 and pitch dark, and they’re now supposed to be here in the next 10 minutes. Ah, door bell; they arrived as I typed at 19:45. One lad; but very efficient; here and gone in 20 minutes. Job done, apart from some sweeping up to do in daylight. Phew!
Tue 31 Is it my back? Or my bowel? Or my bladder? I can’t work it out, but it’s bloody uncomfortable. I foresee another trip to the doctors. One is not amused.
environment, history, links, medical, photography, science

Monthly Links

Welcome to this month’s well packed selection of links to items you may have missed.

Science, Technology, Natural World

An evolutionary biologist explains what we already know: cats are perfect. [££££]

Nevertheless we’re still trying to fully understand how cats purr.

A Pacific Footballfish (yes, really; they’re a type of anglerfish) has washed up on the Californian coast; only about 30 known specimens have ever been collected.

And now for something completely different … how many tectonic plates does Earth have?

Scientists are saying the Moon is 40 million years older than we thought. Well unless there’s a lot we’re not being told, I don’t find it totally convincing.

Meanwhile way, way out in space the two 50-year-old Voyager probes, now out beyond the solar system, are being given code updates to prolong their mission even more.

So you think quantum physics is weird? Well it isn’t; its weirder! [££££]

Health, Medicine

They’ve tested it, and it turns out the ancient honey-and-vinegar mix is a really effective wound treatment. But then so is superglue. [££££]

It’s long been received wisdom, but does chicken soup really help when you’re sick?

On which note, how many microbes does it take to make you ill? [LONG READ]

Another piece of long-held wisdom is that young, health adults were more vulnerable to the 1918 flu virus. Examination of some skeletons suggests this wasn’t so.

It may sound morbid or traumatising, but researchers are still trying to understand what really happens during a near-death experience. [LONG READ]

Environment

Many of the UK’s big wine retailers have joined forces on the Bottle Weight Accord aimed at globally reducing the weight of glass bottles.

Art, Literature, Language, Music

Aboriginal Australian languages have finally helped linguistics researchers show that a language’s grammar affects how the speaker sees. [££££] [LONG READ]

Many people have assumed the worst, but it is doubtful Lewis Carroll was actually a paedophile?

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

There’s this theory that men evolved to hunt and women evolved to gather (wrapped around childcare etc.). But the thing is, it’s wrong. [££££] [LONG READ]

There are some footprints in New Mexico which if correctly dated mean humans were in the Americas much earlier than thought. It also seems that the first American settlers weren’t who we thought [LONG READ] they were.

In Spain archaeologists have discovered 9500-year-old baskets and 6200-year-old shoes in a bat cave.

Did Stone Age peoples have toilets? It looks like at least some did. [LONG READ]

There’s one small glimmer of light amongst the climate change which is melting all the ice … some interesting ancient artefacts are coming to the surface from their alpine deep freeze. [LONG READ]

At the other end of the scale, scientists in Israel are having some success growing date palms from 2000-year-old seeds found at sites in the Jordanian desert.

Staying in Europe … in Italy a 2200-year-old tomb has been discovered – and it’s decorated with a mythical hellhound and sea-centaurs.

Declassified satellite images of Syria and Iraq from 1960s and 70s are revealing a large number of Roman forts in the area; far more than were expected.

Never let it be said that Romans didn’t have all mod cons, because it appears that at least some had their own wine fridge.

Also dating from the Roman period, an 1800-year-old sarcophagus, which held a woman of “special status” has been unearthed in NE France.

Let’s skip quickly over to the Americas again … the Mayan reservoirs relied on aquatic plants to help provide clean water.

And we’re back in Europe and with that melting ice … a rare, well preserved and possibly Viking, horse bridle has emerged from melting ice in Norway.

It seems that the Vikings had windows as fragments of Viking-Age window glass have been found in Denmark and Sweden.

Our favourite medievalist has written a short explication of the Holy Roman Empire. [LONG READ]

Medieval manors were actually important employers; here’s a look at some of the jobs.

Meanwhile medieval people got murdered, and some academics have put together murder maps for three cities.

Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533), a manual of learned magic, explicated the ways in which magicians systematically understood and manipulated the cosmos. [LONG READ]

Now coming almost up to date … 19th-century Britain had this aversion to allowing women to practice medicine.

Food, Drink

Researchers have finally revealed the true origins of grapes and wine. [££££] [LONG READ]

So just why are 1 in 7 of us addicted to ultra-processed foods? [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

It that time of year, but Katherine May suggests ways in which the can lighten these dark months.

Here are ten questions to help start an important conversation with a teenager (well anyone really).

A professional architectural photographer talks about the magic of photographing the Romney Marsh Churches. [LONG READ]

Still down in Kent, my friend Katy Wheatley got to see round the late Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage which is in one of my favourite places, the desolation of Dungeness.

Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!

Finally … the heroic and amazing exploits of animals working for us including ferret electricians and land-mine clearing rats. [LONG READ]